A finely-observed physical landscape dominates Mark Allinson's poetry: gritty, gnarly, windswept—the sand dunes, breakers, tussocks, seed-pods and bleached bones of the rugged New South Wales south coast. But these poems also map a spiritual terroir no less difficult, impressive and awkwardly beautiful: the poetry is witty, bumptious, inconvenient, necessary, real, true. If I were to imagine a Mark Allinson poem as a physical object, it would be as a wind-and-tide-smoothed piece of driftwood, elegant and grainy, worn by time into something beautiful and enduring. Allinson achieves all this through a meticulous but unobtrusive craftsmanship: this is verse for those who like to sip their poetry neat. Mark Allinson can be a terrible pain in the arse, but he writes like an angel. (Paul Stevens / editor, The Flea)

Mr. Hill's metrics and rhymes are flawless. Ever since Matthew Arnold asserted that Pope was a fine prose writer and no poet, this style of didactic verse has had its detractors, and in the twenty first century not all readers have the patience for the rhetorical flourishes the style requires. Nevertheless lovers of Pope and Dryden should rejoice: Mr. R. Nemo Hill is your new hero. (Anna Evans / Raintown Review)

PLEASE CHOOSE ONE

WILLIAM MONTGOMERY

byQuincy R. Lehr

"But still, a sneer could not have hurt me more

Than her clear laugh that sang of expectations

So long forgotten from a distant day

When youth still spread before me, and the poor

And pitiful attempts at explanations

Still lay in ambush, only years away."

Quincy R. Lehr's poetry has been described by Michael O'Loughlin as "intellectually rigorous and displaying a serious engagement with poetic form", by John W Sexton as "a wonderfully strong and powerful collection", Liam Aungier has described Quincy as "one of the finest poets I have had the pleasure of knowing", and Fiona Sampson declared in the Irish Times, "These long, busy poems demonstrate much energy and narrative talent."

SHOPPING CART

LATEST RELEASES

FORTHCOMING

Coming soon......in Summer 2017, "VEIL ON, VEIL OFF", John Marcus Powell's second full collection of poems....."SCHNAUZER", a play in one act by David Yezzi.....

CONTACT

exottreasures@gmail.com

ABOUT EXOT BOOKS

EXOT BOOKS is a chapbook press devoted to travel in the broadest possible sense. Arthur Rimbaud wrote towards the end of his life, in a letter to his mother: “The world is very large and full of magnificent lands which could not be visited in a thousand lifetimes.” And yet there are forms of travel that allow one to leave one’s world for another without moving anything but the mind—that allow one to travel not only through space and time but also, with a map of language in hand, through the experience of another. And ultimately does not experience define both time and place as much as their more material co-ordinates do? How often have we read of a time and place we thought we knew as our own, only to find it changed through the eyes and by the voice of another?
The great Victorian explorer Sir Richard F. Burton claimed that “a traveler’s legs are like blossoming branches, and he himself grows and gathers the fruit.” EXOT BOOKS is devoted to this ideal of the shared fruits of travel, devoted to the doors that the mysteries of language can open onto those worlds we thought we’d never know, as well as those worlds we thought we knew already.
In 2006 a small chapbook company appeared on the scene in New York City, a company devoted to providing a forum for the sort of poetry its editors most enjoyed: a mostly metrical verse that employs, expands, and even explodes received forms. Though the appropriately christened MODERN METRICS has since expanded and exploded beyond its origins—now transformed into EXOT BOOKS—an abiding love of the heights as well as the breadth of language remains the press's guiding principle.
Both word and image are of paramount importance to EXOT BOOKS—and thus great care is taken to create an imaginative visual setting for every line of poetry published. All books are printed on 25% linen paper, with endpapers and original artwork on full-color covers. Such care and quality in design are necessarily reflected in our prices (which, please note, already include domestic shipping costs). With many visual and verbal surprises already onstage and many more waiting in the wings, I am confident that each of these books will prove a handsome addition to your poetry bookshelf—as well as a welcome postcard from Elsewhere.
Bon Voyage,
R. Nemo Hill
Autumn, 2009